


To Be Worn

by Eyrdamun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Fluff, It wasnt supposed to even have the ship but it happened, M/M, More platonic than anything, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 00:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17756324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyrdamun/pseuds/Eyrdamun
Summary: How bitterly sweet, Amamiya's clothes aren't always his own.





	To Be Worn

 The sun light filters in through LeBlanc's windows as Akechi sits at the counter. He leans forward to hide his slouch, fiddles with his phone as he waits for the older man, Sakura, to finish brewing his coffee. There's an easy silence floating lazily in the air and Akechi breathes it in. If he could, he'd greedily hold his breath, assimilate that peace and bury it in the holes of his bone marrow.

The older man places the cup in front of Akechi with a grunt and waves his hand dismissively as the detective enunciated his gratitude.

He likes Sakura. He's a no nonsense man, too easy to talk to despite his gruffiness and his hard mood presents itself in fatherly ways. Or what Akechi imagines is paternal.

It's the closest he'll get.

He likes Sakura, not as much as he is fond of Amamiya and his presence but-

The bell jingles as the door swings open, because thinking of the Devil is to call upon it.

Amamiya strides in easily. There's a sleepy slowness to his movements, the fluidity of slow dancing coursing down his legs. But what catches Akechi's attention isn't his legs- it's just part of his job to observe and it's curious that a teenager could walk as if floating, that's all- it's the glasses perched on his nose.

Golden rimmed, lenses blue, reflective and lustrous. The sunglasses he wears clash with how Akechi imagined Amamiya to dress.

It was already hard to follow Amamiya's gaze, now it's impossible. Akechi decides he dislikes the new glasses.

“You still didn't give those back?” the cafe shop owner snorts.

Amamiya shrugs. The tremor of his shoulders tinged with a smidge of shyness. Or perhaps embarrassment. “They look good on me.”

Amamiya nods at him as he sits at the bar, one chair over, his school bag between them. A paw sneaks through the almost zipped close bag and unzips it.

“Keep telling yourself that, kid.” Sakura provides a father's tough love and a cup of coffee. Akechi pretends not to notice and stares at the blue eyes staring at his back. “Or maybe…”

“Nope. Still not dating.”

Amamiya takes off the sunglasses. He places them with care on the table far away so that he can still prop his elbows and sits his usual specs on his nose before finally glancing at Akechi.

He nods with a small asymmetrical smile. Akechi answers with a symmetrical one. Sakura tinkers in the kitchen.

“It's quite sunny today.”

He nods again, this time in half hearted agreement. “It reflects off of everything.”

“Oh, you certainly can't escape the sun in the city,” Akechi chimes conversationally as Amamiya turns away and tentatively sips his coffee. “If it doesn't reflect off of the buildings, it's the cars.”

The cat jumps out with a too human mutter and Amamiya flinches. His drink fogs up his lenses before he could pull away.

Akechi laughs unwillingly, yet he manages to smooth it out into an even, kind, chuckle. “Let it sit for a bit longer.”

Akechi will miss this if his intuition is proven right.

* * *

Saturday evening rolls by.

Akechi sips his usual drink at the cafe, Sakur-Soujirou, he requested to be addressed like that- fills a crossword puzzle languorously on his left.

Amamiya thunders down the stairs, uniform replaced by a loud colorful shirt. Sunglasses that aren't his perched on the neck of his shirt, they sway with his walk.

“You're never going to give anything back, huh?”

Amamiya smiles wide and boyish. Akechi tries to drown it, drown something, down with his coffee but he can still see them interacting over the porcelain rim. Amamiya brings a hand to rub the back of his neck, smile still more lively than whatever the detective managed to carve on the other's face.

“You make it sound like I stole them.”

Well, he has more than enough proof about the other's identity. He shouldn't complain about being unable to bloom smiles on his face when he knows how this will end.

“They might have forgotten their stuff here, but you're the one parading around wearing it.” There's somehow no accusation behind the words. Akechi has heard this tone when Amamiya attempted to do latte art. “You better let them raid your closet too, you hear?”

Amamiya laughs a subdued but too ebullient for him 'yes' and marches on. He only stops momentarily, a second long enough to greet Akechi with a much more muted demeanor and just like that, he's out the door.

And Akechi finds his cup drained in his hands.

* * *

On the way from the station, he finds Amamiya.

It's late and the setting sun gives away to a chilly air. He almost doesn't recognize Amamiya in the half darkness and the ill fitting coat. Slightly hunched, he fights with convenience store bags, Akechi can see the snacks ready to burst out of the flimsy plastic.

He sees the opportunity for what it is.

“Please allow me to help.”

Amamiya’s smile peaks above the white fur lining the neck of his dark green jacket. He mouths a thank you, or perhaps Akechi doesn't catch it as he takes the bags.

His eyes are stuck on the light freckles of paint dusting the white button up he wears. He wonders...

“You paint?”

Amamiya vocal chords strum a confused curious sound. “No, I doodle with pens and paper though.”

Akechi follows Amamiya to the cafe. “I believe that translates to a confession of not paying too much attention in class.”

Amamiya snickers. The noise too low for Akechi to truly clutch onto. With no distinct sound, it becomes an unspecial thing.

It's for the best.

There are people waiting upstairs for Amamiya when they arrive. Akechi watches his back as he hurries up, three letters written on the jacket look back.

* * *

A cold morning after Okumura's death and before Akechi guides them to the casino, he greets Amamiya at the train station.

He wears a thin scarf, a pastel knit, everything so obviously not his--

“Hey,” Amamiya greets.

* * *

Akechi wants to test it out. It's a bad idea, he knows, but he's curious. Curious and, it's strange, there's a void in his gut, a hunger he decides to let lie.

When Amamiya calls them over for a phantom thieves meeting, he brings an inoffensive sweater. It's something he won't miss, something he never wears. An inconspicuous garment that people won't think it a trap when left behind.

When he gets home, Amamiya texts him.

_‘You forgot your sweater.’_

Akechi thinks this is how scientists feel during an experiment. His heart drums.

_‘Ah, I was wondering where it went!’_

He wonders if he should say more. What had the others said? How could so many different people say the same thing? Amamiya covers his skin with anything they leave him. A traitorous thought ponders if he should ask them.

He ignores it, because Soujirou said that they were things forgotten in the attic and Amamiya huffed it was nothing more.

* * *

LeBlanc's bell announces an entrance, Akechi looks up from his coffee and Soujirou ftom the newspaper.

Amamiya wears Okumura's knit over one of Kitagawa’s paint stained button up shirt, both closed. He can see Takamaki's sunglasses peeking from his bag, a strip of colour from Sakamoto’s loud shirt peering from where the knit and the button up don't close. The belt Sakura wears as decoration holds Amamiya's jeans up, and Akechi's eyes catch onto the younger Nijima's scarf balled up in Amamiya's hand. Morgana rests his head on Amamiya's shoulder and blinks.

The only thing missing-

Amamiya tells him to wait a second, before remembering manners and greeting the two of them.

Soujirou chuckles as he trots upstairs. Akechi waits as Amamiya comes back down

He's dressed down, wears less of his friends and is freed from his bag and the strip of fabric that had snared his hand. But he holds a plastic bag instead.

“Here,” Amamiya mumbles, his lips twitch into a small smile.

Akechi takes the bag, placed it on the chair besides him.  “Thank you.”

The coffee is far more bitter than usual.

Amamiya leaves again, not too long after and still covered in his friends.

“You alright, kid?”

Soujirou takes his cup with frown.

“Ah,yes. It's time I take my leave as well.”

Akechi places the money on the counter. It had just been a bad idea. Or maybe it just takes more time. He doesn't have that luxury, he throws the sweater in charity drive box on the way home.

* * *

  
  
  
  
  


Akechi is 22. The scarred tissue on the right side of his torso itches. Akechi has his bad habits, has had a million and will have a thousand more, he scratches the skin lightly over the fabric of his jacket.

Amamiya- Ren? It depends sometimes on the day, sometimes on the hour, the distance between them isn't constant- should be arriving soon.

It's been a week since they last saw each other at LeBlanc. The afternoon had coated the store with a cosy and warm light, and the cafe's atmosphere helped soothe a jumpy edge Amamiya had carried. An edge Akechi himself hones instead of dull, but he keeps faith. Time flows forward, slow and steady, and Akechi still kept some of a disillusioned orphan's habits. He reaches for things he doesn't deserve, clutches them until he does and until they will never be taken from him.

The autumn sun shines down Inokashira park, Akechi is left to wait two minutes under it.

“Sorry, Mona needed extra scratching,” the other arrives. His usual jeans and bag pop into view, Taka-- Ann's, no, it still tastes too familiar- maki's sunglasses glint under the sunlight from where they sit atop black fluffy curls. A button up shirt whose original owner he can't discern is covered by argy- “-- and then Boss told me to give you-”

Ren. Today, he's Ren. Akechi feels slightly winded. And he can't tear his eyes away.

Ren cuts himself off, stretched arm left hanging with the extended thermos in its grasp.

“You alright? Why aren't you blinking?”

“That's my sweater.”

Ren looks down as if he didn't know what he was wearing. “You forgot it last time.”

“You’re wearing it…?” He feels an emotion bubbling up his throat. He traps it in with his teeth and yet it still moulds his expression into something Akechi would prefer unseen. He pours it out, tentatively, with his words- the lesser of two evils. “You didn't back then. I'm… surprised. That's all.”

Ren stares. “That's why you're gaping?” He then shrugs, a shy tinge covers the gesture and he scratches the back of his neck with his free hand. Akechi drinks in every gesture and how it moves and folds the fabric of his sweater. “We're friends now, so…” Ren trails off, makes a grimace and pushes the thermos into Akechi's chest as if it were the vulnerability of the moment. “Stop looking at me like that-and drink this.”

Akechi doesn't know what face he makes. The gentle and lax pulse of his muscles accompanied by the tender fluttering of his heart is foreign, but it's nice.

He does only one of the things Ren told him to. The taste of coffee costs his tongue, his lungs, Soujirou probably sent him a sweet blend. Or maybe not, Ren doesn't need to know any better.

**Author's Note:**

> [Posts a non proofread drabble instead of working on going fics] parkour


End file.
